Disasters are becoming more frequent, more costly, and more devastating. While direct disaster costs have grown to approximately $202 billion annually, the Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2025 estimates that the true cost, is 11 times higher at nearly $2.3 trillion.
Despite this, investment in disaster risk reduction (DRR) remains far too low in national budgets and international assistance. Under the theme “Fund Resilience, Not Disasters”, International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2025 calls for a decisive shift: fund resilience now to avoid paying for disasters later.
Financing is the single challenge that unites the disaster, climate, development, and humanitarian domains. The unique advantage of disaster risk reduction is that it can simultaneously strengthen all the other domains, because of its emphasis on reducing vulnerabilities and building resilience.
Countries, rich and poor, are facing disasters that are larger and more destructive. This is partially driven by an increase in extreme weather events, but it is also driven by risk-blind investments, which increase the exposure and vulnerability of people and assets
Kamal Kishore
Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, and Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR)
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Key messages
- Disasters are a growing threat to economic prosperity and sustainable development, with costs underestimated and unsustainable.
- Disaster costs are pushing countries into spirals of increased debt, lower incomes, increased insurability, and repeated humanitarian crises.
- Declining international assistance makes it even more critical to reduce disaster losses through disaster risk reduction investments.
- Cutting funding for disaster risk reduction leads to more expensive disasters in the future, along with more humanitarian needs.
- To reduce disaster costs, countries must increase funding for disaster risk reduction and ensure all development investments are risk-informed.
